An independent commission published on Friday estimated that over 200,000 young people in Spain have been sexually abused by the Roman Catholic clergy since 1940.
The report didn’t give an exact number, but it mentioned a survey of more than 8,000 people. It found that 0.6 percent of Spain’s adult population, which is about 39 million people, said they experienced sexual abuse by clergy members when they were children.
The percentage increases to 1.13 percent, which is more than 400,000 people, when taking into account abuse by regular members, according to Spain’s national ombudsman Angel Gabilondo. He shared this information during a news conference where he presented the report’s findings.
The recent events in Spain have caused more trouble for the Roman Catholic Church. This comes after a number of scandals involving sexual abuse, often including children, that have occurred worldwide in the last two decades.
However, in Spain, which is a country with a strong Catholic tradition but has become less religious over time, allegations of abuse by clergy are only recently starting to gain attention. This has resulted in survivors accusing authorities of intentionally delaying or obstructing investigations.
“Sadly, for a long time, there has been a strong inclination to ignore or hide instances of wrongdoing or to shield those responsible,” stated Gabilondo, who used to be in charge of education.
The report is not happy with how the Catholic Church has responded to cases of child abuse involving the clergy. It says their response is not enough. It suggested making a state fund to give compensation to victims.
Offices that protect children Right before the report was shown in parliament, the Spanish bishops conference announced that it would have a special meeting on Monday to talk about what they found.
In March 2022, Spain’s parliament voted strongly in favor of forming a special group, led by the country’s ombudsman, to investigate claims of sexual abuse involving vulnerable children within the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church in Spain, which had previously refused to conduct its own investigation, chose not to participate in the independent inquiry. However, they did cooperate by sharing documents about cases of sexual abuse that had been reported by dioceses.
However, due to increasing political pressure, a private law firm was assigned in February 2022 to conduct a “audit” on previous and current cases of sexual abuse involving clergy, teachers, and other individuals connected to the Church. This investigation is expected to be finished by the end of the year. In June, the Spanish Church announced that it found 927 instances of child abuse through a complaints process started in 2020.
It claims that it has established procedures for addressing sexual abuse and has created “child protection” offices within dioceses.
‘Tip of the iceberg’ However, an investigation conducted by the popular newspaper El Pais, which started in 2018, has discovered 2,206 victims and 1,036 individuals accused of abuse. These incidents date all the way back to 1927.
Experts say that this is just the beginning, as mentioned in the newspaper on Friday before the report was released. The Church’s abuse crisis became widely known in 2002 when the Boston Globe newspaper exposed that priests had been sexually abusing children for many years and that church leaders had tried to hide it.
Reports of widespread child abuse were later found in the United States, Europe, Chile, and Australia. This harmed the reputation of the Church, which has 1.3 billion members, and caused some people to leave the Church.
A commission in France found in 2021 that around 216,000 children, mostly boys, were sexually abused by clergy since 1950.
A study in Germany discovered 3,677 instances of abuse from 1946 to 2014. In Ireland, over 14,500 individuals were compensated through a government program for those who suffered abuse at Catholic Church-run juvenile facilities.
